'Awesome Amy' marks 100 years

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MILESTONE: Southland's newest centenarian Amy Rutherford, of Gore.

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She might be a little hard of hearing but there's not much that gets past Southland's newest centenarian, Amy Rutherford.

Awesome Amy, as she is known around the Parata resthome, in Gore, celebrates her 100th birthday today with family and friends, a gathering she has been looking forward to.

After 100 years the numbers start to add up – two children, five grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren.

Reflecting yesterday on a century of living, Mrs Rutherford said she had no regrets.

"I feel I have lived a very full life."

Born at Naseby Hospital, the second youngest of 10 children to Charlie and Sarah Inder, Mrs Rutherford was an outdoors person.

If she was not working on the family's 2000 acre (809 hectare) farm at Launceston, feeding the hens or milking the cows, she was playing in the wide open spaces.

Mrs Rutherford said she missed out on learning the traditional skills expected of women then, such as cooking, and suspected her husband Raymond suffered in silence in later years. "I had to learn and I did learn quickly when we got on to the farm," she said.

There have been many memories along the way but one of the most distinct was welcoming the soldiers home from World War I.

The then 8-year-old and fellow Naseby school pupils would line the road and cheer each man's return.

She left home at 13 to attend St Hilda's Collegiate, in Dunedin, and worked in the city for the while but was a country girl at heart.

Mrs Rutherford believes her 20s were her best years, skiing the Rock and Pillar range (Queenstown wasn't even on the map in those days). She was a founding member of the Otago Ski Club.

She married her late husband in 1940 and, after a stint as leasees of the Styx Hotel, in Paerau, the couple managed farms in Central Otago and Eastern Southland before moving to Gore and buying their first home.

If there was any recipe for longevity, Mrs Rutherford said it was probably her outdoor life. However, she suspects it also has something to do with her genes. One of her sisters also lived until she was 100 and several of her siblings lived into their 90s.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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